Deadly Dance

by Hilary Bonner

  One half of me was excited. The other half already regretting what I’d done. I parked in short-term parking and walked swiftly into Terminal Three. Manee was flying Thai Air.

  She arrived on a Saturday evening. I’d made myself look as much as possible like the picture I’d sent her. I’d given my hair a dark rinse and grown some facial hair, albeit little more than a hint of stubble after a day without shaving, which I planned to remove before returning to work on Monday morning. I was also wearing the tinted glasses.

  I spotted her as soon as she walked into the arrivals hall. She was very small and pretty, prettier even than her picture had suggested.

  Just as I’d told her I would, I’d printed out her name in big letters and stuck it on a piece of cardboard, like the chauffeurs do. Manee. Manee Jainukul. She’d said she was sure I would recognise her and she me, from our photographs. But I knew I didn’t look at all like my photograph, even with the amendments I’d attempted to make to my appearance.

  I watched as she first spotted the name board I was carrying, then looked up at my face. At once, I saw the doubt in her. My stomach lurched. I forced my features into the most welcoming and reassuring smile I could manage.

  Suddenly the doubt seemed to lift and she smiled back, brightly, excitedly. We walked towards each other. I put my hand on her trolley, proprietorial already.

  ‘Manee?’ I queried, though the question was unnecessary.

  ‘Saul?’ her voice was high-pitched, childlike, full of hope.

  I felt like a rat. I suppose I was behaving like a rat and not for the first time, but I was already in too deep to do anything about that. I’d feared we might not even get beyond the airport, however things looked promising, so far. Manee was still studying my face though, scrutinising me.

  I thought I’d better deal with that straight away.

  ‘Sorry about the picture,’ I said. ‘I know it’s not a good likeness. It isn’t very up to date, you see.’ I turned my smile of welcome and reassurance into a disarming boyish grin. Well, the best shot I could make at it anyway. ‘Vanity, I’m afraid.’ I continued.

  It seemed ages before she spoke.

  ‘But you very handsome,’ she said eventually, ‘Very much more handsome than picture.’

  I liked that. I liked that a lot. This was the sort of woman I’d been looking for all my life. I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, in a chaste sort of way. It seemed I did the right thing. She beamed at me.

  I steered her out of the arrivals building and led her to the hire car in the car park. It was only a small Ford but, being a rental, it was nearly new and very clean. She looked at it approvingly or I thought she did, anyway.

  On the way back to Bristol, we made polite and somewhat stilted conversation. I thought she was probably nervous. I was certainly nervous. Not least because I had another little problem to surmount before we reached our destination.

  Stupidly perhaps, I’d emailed her a photograph of my real house when I’d invited her to the UK. I’d been trying to impress her, you see, to do my best to ensure that she would fly halfway across the world to be with me. It wasn’t anything special, but it was quite a nice house and was in keeping with the picture I had painted of myself and the profile I had created. But I couldn’t take her to my house, it would reveal far too much about me and I was afraid that things would go wrong. After all, they always had before, then I’d be trapped.

  ‘My house,’ I said. ‘I sent you a picture. Do you like it?’

  She nodded enthusiastically. Her whole face lit up.

  ‘For me, very beautiful house,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, well it’s going to be even more beautiful for you,’ I told her. ‘I’m having some work done on it. A new bathroom and kitchen.’

  ‘Me very excited, Saul,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but it’s meant quite a lot of structural work and disruption. I’m afraid the house isn’t liveable in at the moment,’ I lied. ‘There isn’t even any running water. So I’ve rented a little flat. It won’t be for long, few weeks at most.’

  I watched her face fall.

  ‘I so want to be in your fine house, Saul,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ I responded. ‘We will be there together soon. It won’t be long, I promise and the flat is quite nice.’

  She looked doubtful, very doubtful. I changed tack slightly.

  ‘It has two bedrooms,’ I said. ‘One each, if you like, until we are married, which will also be soon, I hope. And, I want you to know that I won’t be, uh, expecting anything until then. First, we can just get to know each other. No obligation to do anything else. Nothing like that.’

  For a second or two she looked confused, then her face split into the big smile again. It seemed I had said the right thing.

  ‘You honourable man, Saul,’ she said. ‘Very fine, honourable man.’

  I touched her hand lightly, affectionately.

  Her assessment of my character, of course, could not have been further from the truth.

  FOURTEEN

  In the morning, Vogel made himself put all thoughts about the bombshell letter to the very back of his mind. He needed all his energy and brain power to be concentrated on the investigation into the death of Melanie Cooke.

  He left the house just before six, as Mary had predicted, and caught the little train to Temple Meads Station. It was fifteen minutes or so walk from Kenneth Steele House, which he always said he didn’t mind, because it was the only exercise he got.

  In keeping with Mary’s advice, he intended to call Dawn Saslow as early as he reasonably could, after the previous extended day. He didn’t expect his team to keep quite the working hours that he did – although very nearly.

  It was extraordinary how often Mary had the knack of stating the damned obvious.

  He’d been in too much of a hurry. It wasn’t a mistake he’d usually make, but all police officers were aware of the importance of the golden first 24 hours in a murder inquiry. He’d wanted to get the school visit over as fast as possible and move on, but Sally Pearson was 14, the age of keeping secrets. And, although he prided himself on his interviewing skills, Vogel, in common with most middle-aged men, was totally bewildered by both the mental and physical complexities of a young, teenage girl.

  Vogel called Saslow just after seven.

  ‘I’m going to get Claire Brown to talk to that teacher and child from Moorcroft,’ he began. ‘It’s a long shot that either of them have any further information and, if they do, Brown’s just the sort to winkle it out. I’ve got something for you that could be more important. Have another go at Melanie Cooke’s friend, Sally Pearson, will you? I’ve a feeling she knows more than she’s letting on. As it’s Saturday she’ll be at home, presumably. I’m hoping it might help to be talking to her in her home environment, away from teaching staff, and without a bloody, great plod like me putting his size elevens in it. Get round there will you. Take Polly Jenkins. Tell Margot Hartley where I’ve sent you.’

  Saslow smiled. Anyone less plod-like than Vogel was hard to imagine. She supposed he had a point though and she understood his choice of an accompanying officer well enough. Polly was a sassy, young, black constable, five foot nothing and super skinny. She dressed streetwise and although actually twenty-four, only three years younger than Saslow, at a glance probably looked more like a teenager. She also had a brain like a bacon slicer and had been drafted into the major crimes unit at Kenneth Steele House six months earlier as a crime coordinator.

  Saslow called her straight away. She knew Polly would be delighted to be asked to be actively involved in a murder inquiry. It would not be the first time she had been called on because of the way she looked, more than anything else, but nobody ever remarked on that.

  All she said was: ‘Oh cool.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up in an hour,’ said Saslow. ‘Brief you on the way.’

  Saslow dressed in tight, black jeans and a tan, leather jacket. It was the nearest she had to streetwise clot
hes.

  Jenkins, with her braided hair, faded, denim jacket, short, black skirt and well-worn, silver trainers, looked rather more the part, as both Vogel and Saslow had known she would.

  They arrived at Sally Pearson’s house just after 8.30. It was a semi-detached property in one of Bristol’s better suburbs. Saslow had been careful not to make it any earlier, even though Vogel might have wished for that. Two police officers calling much before 8.30 would smack rather too much of a dawn raid she thought. It was still earlier than she would have liked to make the call.

  The girl’s mother answered the front door. She seemed anxious, but not altogether surprised, to be confronted by two police officers, even at that time in the morning.

  ‘Sally’s not up yet,’ she said, ushering the two women into the sitting room and gesturing for them to sit. ‘I’ll fetch her down. Though what she can tell you I don’t know. She’s ever so upset. We all are.’

  Saslow and Jenkins made sympathetic noises. Saslow lowered herself onto the big, squashy sofa against the far wall. Jenkins sat in one of four upright chairs set around a small dining table by the window. It was ten minutes or so before mother and daughter reappeared. Sally was still wearing her pyjamas with a dressing gown over them, which was pink with a rabbit motif. Dressed like that, she looked like the child she really still was and she was clearly near to tears.

  ‘Please don’t worry about anything, Sally,’ Saslow began. ‘We just want an informal chat, to see if there’s anything you know that might help us catch whoever did this to Melanie. Sometimes people know things they don’t realise the importance of.’

  Sally nodded unenthusiastically.

  ‘Look, why don’t you sit down here next to me.’

  Saslow gestured towards the other half of the sofa she was sitting on.

  Sally Pearson rather pointedly perched herself on the edge of an armchair as far away from Saslow as possible.

  Nonetheless, Saslow persevered.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us again about the few days leading up to Melanie’s death? We think she may have arranged to meet someone that night, possibly a man. Do you know anything about that?’

  Sally glanced towards her mother.

  ‘If you know anything, my girl, you tell this officer now,’ instructed Mrs Pearson. ‘I never understood what you were doing going around with Melanie Cooke anyway.’ Mrs Pearson glanced towards Saslow. ‘Not our sort of people,’ she said. ‘If you see what I mean.’

  Then she looked at Polly Jenkins, as if seeing the black PC for the first time and blushed slightly.

  Saslow was afraid that she saw what Mrs Pearson meant all right. Particularly as the woman very nearly sniffed as she made her last remark. It seemed hard to believe that she disapproved of Melanie Cooke and her mother because of their colour, but the glance towards Polly Jenkins had said a lot. In addition, there could be a misplaced sense of class superiority. Saslow knew that Mr Pearson was an insurance salesman and that Mrs Pearson worked part time as a doctor’s receptionist. They clearly saw themselves as aspiring middle class. The family home was spacious and well appointed and Mrs Pearson would consider it far superior to the Cooke’s little, terraced house, even though that was so well kept. No doubt she also saw her family set up as superior to that of Melanie Cooke, who came from – what Mrs Pearson would likely describe as – ‘a broken home’ and had a common, jobbing, brickie stepdad and a lorry driver for a father. The woman’s intervention was not helpful.

  Sally’s lower lip began to tremble. She really did seem to be on the verge of breaking down.

  It was then that Jenkins – who hadn’t reacted at all to Mrs Pearson’s not so subtle expression of racism, even though there was no chance that the sharp, young PC could have missed it – intervened for the first time.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea, is there, Mrs Pearson?’ she asked cheerily. ‘I missed breakfast this morning.’

  Mrs Pearson looked uncertain . Saslow was doubtful too. Police officers were not really supposed to interview under 16-year-olds without the presence of an appropriate adult. But this wasn’t an interview, she reminded herself, just an informal chat, as she had told Sally.

  Jenkins smiled her most girlish and matey smile.

  ‘All right,’ said Mrs Pearson, who clearly did not know quite what to make of the disingenuous PC and left the room for the kitchen.

  Jenkins turned to Sally immediately.

  ‘You want us to get this bad arse off the streets, don’t you, Sally?’ she asked.

  Sally nodded. ‘Course I do,’ she said.

  Jenkins pulled her chair closer to Sally’s.

  ‘So please, darlin’, tell us what you know. You were besties with Melanie. I’ll bet there wasn’t much she got up to you didn’t know about. I remember when I was your age I told my bestie everything and me mum nothin’!’ Jenkins grinned disarmingly. At that moment, Saslow thought, Jenkins would almost have passed for a fourteen-year-old herself.

  Like Saslow, Polly Jenkins was a local girl who spoke with more that a hint of Bristolian in her voice. Sometimes a regional accent could be reassuring, thought Saslow, comforting even.

  Sally sniffed away her tears. She even managed a small smile. It looked as if Jenkins might be working her magic.

  But Sally said nothing.

  ‘She snitched on me in the end though,’ continued Jenkins.

  Something seemed to stir in Sally.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ she said.

  Jenkins shrugged.

  ‘I didn’t have a home like yours, Sally,’ the PC continued. ‘Me mum didn’t care who I was seeing, girl or boy, as long as I wasn’t bothering her, and she had a boyfriend who wouldn’t leave me alone.’ Jenkins paused. ‘You know what I mean?’ she asked Sally.

  Sally nodded, colouring slightly.

  ‘My bestie was the only person in the world I told. I swore her to secrecy, but in the end she told her mum. I remember how frightened I was when the social services came round. And me mum still didn’t want to know. She either wouldn’t believe it or didn’t care. I never knew which. I was twelve. I was taken into care and eventually put with a foster family, who did care. I don’t know what would have happened to me if my bestie hadn’t snitched.’

  Sally stared silently at Jenkins for what seemed like a very long time.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ she said eventually. ‘I can’t. Mum’ll kill me.’

  ‘No she won’t,’ said Jenkins. ‘But your best friend has been killed. Murdered, Sally.’

  ‘So I can’t help her, can I?’ protested Sally, with more than a hint of stubbornness.

  ‘Oh yes, you can,’ said Jenkins. ‘You can help us catch the bastard who did her in. You owe that to Mel.’

  Sally still looked doubtful.

  ‘You’re not that scared of your mother, are you?’ Jenkins persisted, rather to Saslow’s concern.

  The promised tears came suddenly. Sally’s shoulders began to heave.

  ‘Well, are you?’ Jenkins repeated. She clearly wasn’t going to back off.

  Sally shook her head, just as Mrs Pearson re-entered the room carrying two mugs of tea.

  ‘Now you’ve upset her,’ she said accusingly. ‘I hope it’s worth it, that’s all.’

  ‘I think your daughter has something to tell us, Mrs Pearson,’ Saslow interjected. ‘And I have a feeling it might prove to be quite important, isn’t that so, Sally?’

  Sally nodded. She shot a nervous glance at her mother, but all the same began to speak.

  ‘Mel and me, well, we went online a lot, on her laptop because her mum and dad don’t know how to check it like mine do.’

  Jenkins made encouraging noises.

  ‘We used to go on dating sites.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ interrupted Mrs Pearson thunderously. ‘After all we’ve said, all you’ve been told …’

  Saslow gestured to the woman to be quiet.

  ‘It was a game really,’ Sally con
tinued, almost as if her mother hadn’t spoken. ‘Neither of us ever intended to carry anything through. It was just a bit of fun.’

  ‘What were the sites?’ asked Saslow.

  ‘Oh we tried out any we could get for free. There was one called LetsMeet.com …’ Sally’s voice trailed away.

  ‘So did you actually meet anyone. Either of you?’ Saslow asked.

  Sally shook her head. ‘I didn’t. I would have been too scared. Mum is always going on about the dangers of that sort of thing. Mel is, I mean … uh, she was … hardly ever afraid of anything. There was this man she’d been chatting to online for a bit. I didn’t know for certain, but I think she was going to meet him on Thursday night. She asked me to cover for her. She said it was a secret, but she’d tell me afterwards. She liked being mysterious, even with me.’

  ‘Do you know anything about this man?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Sally. ‘Except Mel said he sounded Scottish, and he’d told her he was nineteen and a student. But we both knew that older men lie about their age online, to get younger girls. I said she’d better be careful. That she shouldn’t meet him, not on her own anyway.’ Sally turned towards her mother, who had fallen mercifully silent. ‘I did, honestly. Anyway, she said I was a wuss and she was going to have some fun regardless and that I’d better cover for her, or she’d tell you what we’d been doing, mum.’

  Mrs Pearson still didn’t speak, to Saslow’s relief.

  Sally’s shoulders started to heave again. ‘It’s my fault, isn’t it? It’s my fault she’s dead. I should have snitched on her, like your best friend did.’ She glanced towards Jenkins. ‘I shouldn’t have cared about getting into trouble. If I’d snitched on her, she’d still be alive.’

  ‘You can’t know that, Sally,’ said Polly Jenkins. ‘You thought you were doing the best for your friend and you certainly are now. Did you know his name, this man you thought she might be planning to meet?’

  ‘Only a first name. He called himself Al. Just that. Al.’

  As they left the Pearson house, Saslow asked Jenkins if her story about being rescued from an abusive childhood by her snitching best friend had been a true one.